Diana Abu-Jaber - Birds of Paradise

“I’m not living in the gutter.” Emerson laughs — a fine, clear tone. He puts one hand in his pocket and carries the board loosely in his other arm. “I don’t know. I just wanted to try living not in a house for a while. Or, well, not in the same house my family was in. And not at a college either. Jim says that college is just another arm of the military-industrial complex.”

“Pfft!” Felice curls her upper lip. “What isn’t?” That came directly from Stanley.

“What about you then? Why are you staying in a place like the Green House?”

‘Oh.” She shrugs heavily, aware of Emerson’s scrutiny. “No reason. Same as you.” She walks with her arms crossed.

Emerson is still considering — his eyes lifted as if reading something on the air. “I guess — for us it all kind of fell apart. Jim and Mandy never got married in the first place, so… They said it’s too hard on kids if you have to go through a divorce and all. So. Pretty thoughtful.” His smile is private, directed at the ground; Felice looks away, uncertain if he’s serious.

“They made it too easy — in a way — to fall apart. I mean, next thing we know, Dad’s kind of living with Sandra — this other lady with a baby son — over in Plantation. And Mom moved to Denver to take jewelry design classes.”

“They moved away from you ? That really sucks.”

Emerson’s expression is mild. “Well, they were pretty decent about the whole deal. They talked to us tons about it before they went. I had some impulse control problems, I guess. I’d get a little wild. Jim still stopped by the old house sometimes and gave me and Tosh some cash for groceries and stuff. Of course Tosh would always spend it on weed mostly.” He smiles at her again, that flickering, uncertain expression, but now he’s looking at her.

“Fuck,” she says softly. She lets her knuckles graze his, their fingers intertwine for a few moments before she lets go. They walk several more blocks, silenced by traffic noise, and negotiate a chaotic intersection. Then they pass a residential hedge tall as a gate and the traffic howl diminishes and the street opens to tall, wide trees like those in the Gables. Felice has never been in this neighborhood before — sticking to places she knows — crowded, touristy spots on the beach and a few secret street rat places — avoiding the police and kids from school. She feels exposed and anxious walking up this stately street: there are houses with circular drives, velvety emerald lawns, and children’s bicycles on the lawns. “So where’s your brother now?”

“Tosh?” Emerson half shrugs. “I don’t totally know. He works as some kind of assistant in a medical lab at MIT. I’m too much of a waste product for him. He’s really into, like, motivation and incentives and excellence and shit.”

“And pot.” Felice smirks and Emerson nods and laughs. He pulls a ragged frond from a banana tree and fans her with it, the dry edges flapping against her hair. She swats it back at him, laughing.

DEREK LIVES IN A big house, mid-beach, behind an ornate iron gate on Pine Tree Drive. Felice admires the place, its vaulted ceiling and big fir beams, an entry filled with flat rugs and beaded vases and wooden sculptures that look vaguely African to Felice. She immediately recognizes the young, beefy boy with the shaved head who answers the door. “Wow.” She touches a curved lintel as they enter the main room. “You live here? I thought you lived at the Green House.”

Derek looks around the expansive room with distaste. “My so-called dad lives here when he’s not out with his ho. I’m not supposed to even be here when he’s not. But, like when is he here?” He knocks on a waist-high silver sculpture of a elephant with human arms and legs. It writhes on its wood base on the floor. “Conk-conk. You wouldn’t believe what this fucker cost. Steve-o got it like in Pakistan.” He picks up a small dark carving of a woman’s body with a bird’s head, a sharp, open beak. “Here”—he thrusts it at Felice—“it’s for you — take it.”

“It’s your dad’s, dumbass,” she says, scowling, and replaces it on an empty bookshelf.

“Whatev.” Derek picks up a half-dollar-sized flat silver heart with a dagger through its center, then an old watch that was positioned in an artistic display of timepieces. He slips them into his pocket. “I’ll sell all this crap eventually. He always gets more.”

They follow him through the room into a bright doorway. It’s been years since Felice has been inside a nice kitchen — granite counters crowned with chrome appliances, clean glints of untouched things. Like the kitchens of her school friends’ mothers. Her own mother’s kitchen had a big convection oven and fans — the counters glowed but her appliances looked battered and industrial. Felice sniffs, half hoping for the flour vapor of her home, but the air here is flat and empty. Her hands tremble as if with reawakened muscle memory: she tugs on the heavy fridge door — its tomblike chamber spilling milky light. Expensive, nearly empty shelves: film canisters, six cobalt bottles of water, a package of bacon and carton of eggs. “What a waste,” she mutters.

Derek and Emerson prowl around, rummaging through the cupboards, pulling out jam, peanut butter, macaroni, Oreos. They fry all the bacon and eggs, stirring in ingredients — olives, onions, cocktail franks — apparently at random. When it’s done, the boys half stand, half sit on tall stools pulled up to the counter; Felice sits across from them, knobby elbows on the counter, and watches them eat hunched over their plates, a bar of light cutting across the kitchen from a blue-veined window in the back wall. Felice nibbles a strip or two of Emerson’s bacon — refusing the eggy mess — imagining, with some pleasure, her mother’s revulsion at such food. Her mother didn’t entirely approve of food anyway. Felice thinks of her poking at a steak with her fork, saying, It’s sodden . The food is gone within minutes. Emerson makes an attempt at stacking dishes, but Derek waves them down. “Leave it, the maid’s around somewhere.”

He leads them out a back door to the polished slate patio and a racked assortment of iron weights, dumbbells, and two padded benches. The boys peel off their T-shirts: both of them are big and broad, but Emerson’s back and biceps are defined, anatomical. Derek points a remote, turning up the volume on a portable player; music pulses, drumming the air, a Teutonic frenzy. “Rammstein!” he crows at Felice. “ ‘ Du hast ,’ ha!”

Felice slides into a painted Adirondack chair under an umbrella and watches the guys clatter on and off the benches. They laugh and clap: Derek shouts, “You got it! You got it!” slapping his hands together while Emerson swings the weights up and into his chest. Felice is used to boys showing off for her, but she notices a sort of concentrated seriousness of purpose in Emerson, as if he is focused on a point buried inside his own body. Derek drops the weights, clanking loudly, groaning while he lifts the bar, then hectoring Emerson, standing over him at the head of the weight bench, arms outstretched, ready to catch the bar. Emerson lifts in near-total silence, his neck flattening and his veins bulging in dark seams beneath the surface of his skin. Derek’s sets taper off but Emerson keeps going, sliding one, then another set of thick plates on the bar. Mesmerized by the rivulets of sweat trickling along his brow and neck, Felice loses track of the amount of weight Emerson is lifting. The sun climbs to a steeper, hotter angle, approaching 90 degrees — but Emerson continues with single-mindedness.

As she watches Emerson in his silent exertions her thoughts feel sharp, her emotions honed on a hard edge. Felice hasn’t seen this sort of focus since the days when her friend Hilda flew down parking ramps on her board, hair whipping, her arms aloft, pulling out nose grinds, rails, flips, drop-and-grabs. Emerson in movement is like a new sort of beauty: she’d always thought of beauty as a kind of passivity. Felice has never pursued anything so passionately herself. She grew up taking admiration for granted — eyes all turning toward her — soaking the air with a goldenrod-colored aura. She didn’t have to do a thing to be loved: by her family, their friends, the teachers at school.